Are you an agile leader? Agile leaders are what we call Artists of Change. They can adapt and innovate quickly and easily, making them indispensable in business. Here are the top habits of agile leaders. See whether you have them or not. If not, they’re easy to install in your daily life, and can make a HUGE difference to your success.

A Lack of Agility is Part of the Human Condition

The problem is that most people aren’t like that. The human mind has a strong bias for resisting change and seeing the world from a mainly negative perspective. But the good news is that through small habits of mind you can retrain how your mind operates under pressure, much like an athlete trains their body and mind to perform well under pressure.

Try this 1-Minute Activity for 21 Days

As part of this series you’ll be introduced to four quick and easy to use worksheets that you can use as a self coaching tool or to help others. We found if somebody did these quick activities for 21 days straight, it became default. Its like when you first started driving a car, it was slow. You had to pay attention and focus on every move. Now it’s default, it’s gone into the subconscious. You can drive, talk on the phone, drink coffee, put your makeup on. Not recommended, but its possible. So, that’s what we want to get to with these habits, you just naturally think this way…and then it opens life possibilities up in a huge way. And believe me you’ll use these habits every single day of your life, for the rest of your life, at work and in your personal life.

Leadership Skills that are Quick and Easy to Learn

The idea here is keeping it quick and simple, like brushing your teeth. All of these are small, easy things to do, because over the years of teaching the mindset of a good leader, if you keep it conceptual, non practical and complicated…the majority of people will not implement anything and therefore will not get any good results. On the other hand, by turning a concept into a small, quick habit and testing it to ensure it’s tried-and-true habit in the real world…then people do it, and get the excellent results. That’s what I want for you.

Choose One Issue to Focus On Right Now

Just think about one issue right now. We all have issues, tons of them every day, of course, and how you approach your issues can make or break your agility, resiliency and innovation. Just for fun in your own head, I’d love you to just think about what’s one issue that maybe you loop on lately. You know, the one that maybe you wake up in the morning thinking about, we all have at least one and I want you to just think about applying something like this to it. Now, this is a great way to tell is you’re an agile leader or not…

Do you know your Ideal Outcome?

In all our studies, we found that agile leaders knew their ideal outcome as well as their issue. Non agile leaders only focused on the issue It’s an interesting phenomenon. They just could only think of what wasn’t working and what they didn’t like. Now, here’s the interesting thing. Let’s use the metaphor of climbing a peak. Down at the bottom of the mountain you have your issue. Your ideal outcome is at the top of the mountain. It instantly creates this magnetic draw, even if you don’t know how to get there yet.

The problem is, that many people who know this, still don’t practice it. In our company, we found that if we keep things very simple and easy to do, people are more likely to implement and then they get the results. Especially if you’re influencing emerging leaders, keep it really small and simple; those one-stop-shop habits that make a big difference. This is one of them.

Non Agile Leaders Stay Focused on the Issue

In our research, non-agile leaders stayed focused on the issue. You probably know people like that. They just want to talk about the problem and it’s hard to get them to talk about what they want instead.

Agile Leaders Create and Focus on their Ideal Outcome

On the other hand, agile leaders, they not only can identify their ideal outcome, they focus on it over and over again, even in the face of nothing’s changing. It’s like Thomas Edison and the invention of the light bulb. It took him over 1000 tries. Everyone else who was trying to invent a light source at the time, gave up at 50.

Ideal Outcome Worksheet

Download this Ideal Outcome worksheet. Try it right now on something in your life. Either download and print out the handout, or use a pad of paper or type into your phone. Say, your issue is I feel overwhelmed by the amount of email I have to deal with. You’d write out, as your ideal outcome I somehow find a way to manage email well this week. It needs to be a specific ideal outcome using the words “I somehow, or we somehow”. You don’t know HOW yet, but you’ve identified your direction, and so the subconscious mind gets to work on creating that outcome. If NOT given that direction it will create more of the problem. What you focus on grows. When we used this example with a team, all of a sudden people were developing email habits that lessened overwhelm dramatically.

A CEO Who Spent All His Time Solving Other People’s Problems

I worked with a CEO of a company, and he told me that he spent his entire time putting out fires, helping other people solve all their problems. He couldn’t focus at all on any of his big important tasks. He just tried this activity with them. He just said, “Okay, before you come to me with an issue, you have to have the ideal outcome written out.” So he taught people how to do it and then what do you think happened? Far less people started to come to him with issues, because as soon as they created their ideal outcome. They came up with their own solution, and then he had more time for other things. Try that one. It’s very, very popular, it works amazingly well.

A practice like this is like training wheels on a bike to help people make those default changes in how they think. Eventually you don’t need the worksheet, you’ll do it automatically. Now, you can’t just know this conceptually it won’t change it your behavior. You need to DO something and then it will re-write the subconscious neuropathways over time.

Look for part 2

In Part 1 you’re just identifying your issue and your ideal outcome so we have something to work with for the 3 habits in parts 2, 3, and 4, so look for Part 2.

Carla Rieger

“Carla Rieger, motivational speaker, author and coach, activates team leaders and business owners to speak with power and passion. She helps you build a positive team culture and to create presentations that grow your income, build your credibility and change lives for the better.”

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